For a Monday, it wasn’t so bad. One of my coworkers is on vacation so I was in full-tilt boogie covering for her, had twitter open and had loaded up Leo LaPorte’s live stream of Steve Jobs’ keynote about the new iPhone.

I posted a post on the political blog and went back to work, listening to the iPhone presentation in the background, when all of a sudden some Twitter friends sent me a note at the same time telling me they were getting an error message saying that the site they were accessing was on a server that was to be deleted.

WTF? And sure enough, there it was.

I have several sites on Startlogic and all but this one have been migrated to their new server and admin platform. This is the oldest of them all, so I figured it would be one of the last.

Evidently not. It seems that something didn’t port well, and despite the rather snotty insistences that they had been sending me emails for months letting me know this was going to happen (they didn’t, but more in a minute on that), it was still sitting in limbo and due to be deleted forever on June 30th.

So instead of telling me they were going to redirect to a splash page, they said nothing. I went through all of my email and found the note saying it was scheduled for migration but no notice that there had been a problem. No notice saying “drop dead or fix it by June 10th or ELSE.”

Just a forced redirect to a splash page telling every visitor and everyone who linked to me here and on the political blog that…nothing was here.

After spending an hour holding for their tech support, I decided it just wasn’t worth the aggravation. I backed up the blogs, the databases, and all the multimedia and moved everything over to Bluehost before Steve Jobs could say “Congratulations, it’s iPhone 2.0!”

Now it’s nearly 11:00. It took over 12 hours for the DNS to update to the new server. I still can’t see the blog from my own computer here, but twitter friends assure me it’s really, really there. Of course, the database broke during the import and I ended up being locked out of my own blog, but that was a small thing, easily fixed. More or less, anyway.

Just a little notice, Startlogic. That’s all it would have taken. You could have sent me a “FIX THIS OR ELSE” letter. You could have called. Even robocalled and left a message. You could have twittered me, even.

But when you suck up someone’s entire site into a black hole and leave a splash page behind, we’re done. After three years, that’s exactly what we are. Buh-bye. You too, can suckit.

I’m trying the Disqus commenting system for a bit. I’ve commented on my favorite blogs using this system and I really like it as a commenter, so now I want to try it from the host perspective. Let me know what you think about it.

Categories and Tags

Please, can some Wordpress guru explain to me what the difference is between Wordpress categories and tags? It’s driving me CRAZY! What’s a category, what’s a tag, what distinguishes them and why won’t Flock differentiate between categories and tags when I post?

Strong Language and the Power of Words

I ran across this post from the links on the BlogHer ad to the left.  Her question:  Should an author use strong language in the title of his/her post or their writing?   

As a general rule, I don’t.  I will occasionally on the political blog but try not to.  Once in awhile though, my temper gets hold of me over there.  I have over here once or twice, and regretted it both times, mostly because I really prefer to find a voice that speaks forcefully without the use of language.  Anyone can toss off the f word and get attention.  I try to challenge myself to write in a way that gets the point across without the language.  I don’t always succeed, but I do try.

What do you think?

NaBloPoMo in Nov

Yes, I’ve joined NaBloPoMo as a challenge to make myself write daily and hopefully write stuff you want to read.  All joining that means is that I’ll write one post a day for the month of November.  There has been such a high signal-to-noise ratio around here lately that it’s nearly impossible to WANT to sit and write.  There’s nowhere in this house that I can be without someone else there, there’s nowhere that someone isn’t peeking over my shoulder or ordering a Google search from me, and it’s driving. me. crazy.  So I am going to stick my iPod headphones in my ears and quit bailing out on the blog.  One promise: I will do my very very best not to write just to throw words on here.  I generally post every day, but on days where I’m tired or just sick of the impossible environment I have been tossing up a photo.  What I’m aiming for is some quality writing that I’m currently bailing on.  If I end up writing junk I won’t post it and subject you to it.

I Owe Meme Paybacks

And I know it.  Gideon and Vanessa have both linked me in a top 5/10 list and I haven’t reciprocated.  But I will, I promise.  Sorry about that, friends…those responses have been victims of that pesky signal-to-noise thing.  This house is not made for 4 adults, one preteen and one pug.  Truly. 

Genarlow Wilson

Speaking of Gideon and Vanessa, both blogged about Genarlow Wilson’s release last week.  Read both posts, because they offer more insight into the reasoning behind the decision that freed him.  I’m glad they arrived at the decision they did, but wish they’d really come head-on to the issue of whether it was proper to try him as an adult in this situation,  and whether the sentencing guidelines properly address the question of whether  consensual (oral) sex between a 15 year old and a 17 year old should have resulted in an outcome like this.  Gideon says:

[The Court] cites statutes from sister states that don’t punish the same conduct to this extent, but as far as I could see, there was no discussion of when those statutes were enacted or how long they were in effect. It then discusses Georgia statutes for seemingly far worse crimes but with far less punishment, but I don’t think it’s very instructive to compare manslaughter to consensual oral sex.

Vanessa says:

Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears wrote the majority opinion in the scant 4-3 vote that allowed this young man to go free. I’d take that also if I were Genarlow and his attorney B.J. Bernstein but it’s also a signal that much more needs to be done in our justice system.

I agree.  What bothers me the most about this decision is the same thing that bothers me about Julie Amero’s current limbo.  The immediate goal has been met but the long-term outcome and result for others is still up in the air.  So they got the result right but haven’t really taken a deep look at the underlying law, and it doesn’t appear as though Georgia’s legislature is in any hurry to do that either.

Blogged with Flock

Tags: words, writing, meme, nablopomo, genarlow wilson, law

The Mac won and after seeing it in all its glorious coolness, I want one too. Of course, he’s now pretty broke until he can teach a few more lessons or get a gig or two, but he’ll tell ya it was worth it.

I also had enough negative feedback about the other theme to change it. This one is temporary while I roll my own based on the Wordpress Sandbox theme. I like this one, but I’m really hankering after something a little bit different but still nice for visitors all at the same time.

I’m catching my weekend at the beach that I didn’t get last week, which explains the light blogging. Happy Labor Day!

Technorati Tags: mac, macbook, apple, wordpress themes

Things may be a little weird here for a bit. I’ve decided the time has come to redecorate…it’s always easier to redo the virtual living room than it is my own house, so the blog gets more of that.

I’ve got a couple I’m going to try — hopefully I won’t blow up the place in the process.

Looks like it’s time to do a security update to Wordpress. You can download it here. It’s painless — took me about 5 minutes.

The spring cleaning is complete and I really, really like the look of the new template. Ainslie Johnson made the theme; the design is sleek, clean, and easier to look at than the other one, thanks to Wolfgang. I took out their header image and put in my own to remind me of that lovely Ho’okipa sunset whenever I get too stressed over things.

I also added some new content to the sidebar. The newest and possibly most different are the eBay Ads on the right sidebar. I received an invitation to try using these, and I really like the whole idea. Unlike AdSense or the other ads, I can choose categories that are brand-specific, so I’ve included Nikon and Canon EBay listings. You click the listings; I get paid. Presumably you don’t click the listings unless you are interested in something there. Since I blog about my Nikon and Canon and post photos here nearly every day, it seems right to include eBay listings for those brands. If you’re a Nikon or Canon aficionado, eBay is a great place to score lenses and accessories, and now you can find the latest listings right here.

The only other changes really are layout-based. Switching around content locations, and I added back the recent comments feature, which I really missed, along with my Google Reader Shared Items.

Let me know if there’s something you like, don’t like, wish I’d change, is broken, or works pretty well.

Technorati Tags: wordpress template, blog design, blog layout, blog, blogging

Most people do their spring cleaning by getting up and cleaning their house, but for me, it’s about freshening up the template here and giving things a different look. I’ll be working on that later today, assuming I can escape the St. Patrick’s day fun for a bit. If things look weird for a bit, be patient, and hopefully it’ll be a pretty painless transition.